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According to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), as we age, muscles lose their elasticity unless used regularly, leading to stiffness and soreness. Stretching is the best way to regain and improve flexibility, helping seniors remain active and independent. By incorporating some simple stretching exercises into your routine, you can greatly improve your flexibility, as well as enhance your balance, posture and circulation, relieve pain and stress, and prevent injuries.

Ordinarily, this woman does not believe that household tasks are sex-specific. A person does not need upper-body strength to balance a checkbook. The ability to bear children does not uniquely qualify someone to slip a role of toilet paper into a holder. So when routine household chores don’t require superior brawn, she and her husband share them, each doing what he or she likes best or dislikes least.

I have been a registered lobbyist on Beacon Hill for 30 years. I have only represented one client over all that time: Mass Home Care, a private, nonprofit network whose mission is to help elderly and disabled individuals live independently at home. I am in the middle of my 30th state budget cycle. The House version of the budget has just been approved. The Senate is up next. There were 1,307 amendments filed in the House, which means that the average state representative filed eight budget amendments.

By G, Gregory Tooker, CPCU The debate about national health care rolls on and on. The fact remains, however, that nearly every first world nation on the face of the planet considers access to affordable health care a basic right. The United States has been wrestling with this enormous challenge for years. Unfortunately, we are home to some of the most unfit people on earth. Poor diet and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle are mostly to blame. Nearly one person in 10 suffers from some form of diabetes. Many cases are of the type two variety, potentially reversible through improved diet and moderate exercise, but often patients opt for the easier but far more expensive pharmaceutical approach.

Ordinarily, this woman does not believe that household tasks are sex-specific. A person does not need upper-body strength to balance a checkbook. The ability to bear children does not uniquely qualify someone to slip a role of toilet paper into a holder. So when routine household chores don’t require superior brawn, she and her husband share them, each doing what he or she likes best or dislikes least.

In his New York Times bestselling book, “Being Mortal,” surgeon Atul Gawande explains the rise of nursing homes in America starting in the 1950s. “Hospitals couldn’t solve the debilities of chronic illness and advancing age,” he wrote, “and they began to fill up with people who had nowhere to go.” The hospitals lobbied Congress for funding “to enable them to build separate custodial units for patients needing an extended period of “recovery.”

One of Janice Lindsay’s vintage postcards   By Janice Lindsay People don’t send many postcards these days. Here’s what we do: Snap photos with our smartphone and...

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), each year 2.5 million people aged 65 and older end up in emergency rooms due to injuries caused by falls. The good news is there are several things you can do to avoid falling at home. At this time of the year, while you’re making sure your steps and driveway are well-lit, smooth and free from ice, consider making the inside of your home just as safe.

I remember one moment when the world, at least my world, rested in perfect harmony. This wasn’t my only such moment, but it was the earliest I remember of experiencing that sweet contentment that occurs when everything is in its place. When my sister and I were little, our parents played piano. They had a tiny band, playing for weekly square dances at the village dance hall on the lake. Usually they were joined by a saxophone player and a drummer, sometimes a fiddler, sometimes a banjo player. But the piano was the musical anchor, necessary for every set of three square dances followed by three ballroom dances. The work was too demanding physically for one pianist; our parents took turns.

For the past decade, I have reviewed the text of the annual State of the Commonwealth (SOTC) speeches by three governors. I look carefully for use of the word “elderly” or “seniors” to see if there are any significant policy statements about our growing elderly population. Between 2010 and 2020, the Massachusetts population 60+ is projected to grow from 1.27 million to 1.63 million, a 31-percent increase of 359,845 elders. One-quarter of all of the households in Massachusetts includes at least one person aged 65 and over. The population of people aged 65 and over in Massachusetts, as a percentage of total state population, will jump 50 percent between 2010 and 2030, from 14 percent of the population, to 21 percent of the population.